[...] Correcting undergraduate essays together in the evenings, reading aloud the worst sentences to make each other laugh. On her little stereo system, the Barenboim recording of the 40th Symphony. Walking over together to their tenants’ union meetings arm in arm, heads bent, absorbed in conversation. With his fingers now he wipes his eyes. The image of that life: how beautiful, how painful, to believe it could after all be possible. For so long it has hurt too much even to think. And now everything hurts so much all the time that to think makes no difference, to think even lends a kind of sweetness to the terrible pain. The life they could have had together. The refuge of a shared home, their books, furniture, watercolours. Gatherings at the kitchen table, friends calling round for dinner, arguing, laughing. The love they could have given to their own children. Wanted to give. Impossible ever to feel again like a good person, even halfway good, when all the good he had wanted to do in life was closed off to him forever. Had no route left through which to travel. Remained inside him, trapped, festering, turning into something stranger and worse. Proliferation of inappropriate attachments. Holding hard, harder, clutching, not letting go. Well, if that’s suffering, he thinks, let me suffer. Yes. To love whoever I have left. And if ever I lose someone, let me descend into a futile and prolonged rage, yes, despair, wanting to break things, furniture, appliances, wanting to get into fights, to scream, to walk in front of a bus, yes. Let me suffer, please. To love just these few people, to know myself capable of that, I would suffer every day of my life. [...]